The present invention relates to optical regeneration and wavelength conversion systems and methods.
Optical translators that can perform wavelength conversion, power equalization and signal reshaping are important elements for an optical network layer. The wavelength converter function is needed to perform wavelength adaptation between different vendors and to decrease wavelength blocking. The regenerative feature is important since the analog nature of wavelength division multiplex (WDM) systems with erbium doped fiber amplifiers(EDFAs) will suffer from fast accumulation of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), non-flat EDFA gain, fiber non-linearities, dispersion and various types of cross talk.
Currently, optical translation is performed by optoelectronic regenerators. Optoelectronic regenerators, however, have several disadvantages including high cost, restricted bit rate operation and high power consumption. Further, wavelength conversion of 40 Gbit/s return-to-zero (RZ) signals has previously been demonstrated with a monolithically integrated SOA MZ Interferometer. See B. Mikkelsen, et al., xe2x80x9cAll-Optical Wavelength Converter Scheme for High Speed RZ Signal Formats,xe2x80x9d Electron. Lett., vol. 33, no. 25, pp. 2137-2139, 1997, incorporate herein by reference in its entirety. The conversion described therein, however, did not include re-amplification, re-shaping and re-timing (3R) regeneration.
The present invention is directed to an all-optical translator capable of performing re-amplification, re-shaping and re-timing (P3R regeneration) and wavelength conversion of a very high speed optical return-to-zero (RZ) signal (10 to 100 Gbit/s). Measurements of the performance relative to delay variation indicate that the regenerator is able to perform very efficient re-timing.
An aspect of the present invention provides an optical translator that includes an interferometer and a plurality of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) coupled to the interferometer. At least two of the SOAs receives data and a clock signal. The data is received by the at least two SOAs at different times. A coupler combines each of a respective output of the at least two SOAs to provide output data. The output data is a retimed and a reshaped signal of the data provided to at least one of the plurality of SOAs.
Another aspect of the present invention includes an optical translator including an interferometer and a plurality of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) coupled to the interferometer. At least two of the SOAs receives data at different times. The optical translator also includes a circulator that receives a clock signal and a coupler coupled to the circulator. The coupler combines each of a respective output of the at least two SOAs. The output data is provided by the circulator, the output data being a retimed and a reshaped signal of the data provided to at least one of the plurality of SOAs.